


why does everything bring me back to you

by mermistia



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ghosts, Guilt, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Post-Canon, TECHNICALLY this isn’t slash but it also kind of is so shut up, i mean. obviously, lowkey??, yes im writing mental breakdowns again and what about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 08:16:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20288320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermistia/pseuds/mermistia
Summary: Living in the woods by himself is bad.The memories that it brings back are worse. Or, maybe they aren’t.David hasn’t really decided yet.





	why does everything bring me back to you

Memories are too much. 

They’re always too much. 

David hates remembering Jasper, and yet somehow he loves it at the same time. The similarities in their situations, lost in the woods with injuries, bleeding out while tired and alone, is almost spooky, and he can’t help the flashbacks that fly around his brain. They aren’t even full memories, just snippets, like short sections of a long story that he isn’t allowed to fully know. 

Water, streaming down a cliff. 

Hands, reaching out for each other when it’s already too late. 

Shoes, crumbling and burning and turning charcoal black in a roaring fire. 

It’s confusing and painful and just way too much to deal with right now, so he shakes his head hard and fast as if that can get rid of the thoughts. 

He has more important things to deal with right now. More important things than the distant memories of dead friends, of whispers of secret promises inside shared tents at 2am, of bears and cliffs and light up shoes that will never be bright enough to fill the dark memories that they’re a part of. 

More important things. 

Like the claw marks covering his chest. 

He winces, even just thinking about the wounds causing them to pulse with pain, and he tries to clear his brain enough to be able to think of a solution. Anything to dull the pain. To be numb to it. 

A bandage. 

He needs a bandage, and it’s as if a lightbulb suddenly turns on in his head. He’s thankful for the little bit of light, and smiles just a little as he grips the bottom of his shirt with a shaking hand and pulls. The shirt moves uncomfortably at his neck, slipping under his neck tie and rubbing painfully at the skin, but he ignores it as he keeps pulling with all the strength that he has left in his aching body. 

It doesn’t work. He feels tears well in his eyes as he struggles, shifting about in the dirt and mud and putting an uncomfortable amount of pressure on his broken leg before he gives up, dropping he fabric and leaning back against the dirty wall of the cliff. He doesn’t know why he bothered trying, really. He doesn’t have the energy to rip his clothes, to tie up a bandage, to move at all. 

He’ll just wait. 

For what, he isn’t sure, but he knows that he can’t achieve much of anything right now, so he closes his eyes, buries a hand in the wolf’s fur, and waits.

* * *

Living in the woods is strange. 

It’s weird to feel like that, he supposes, but it’s strange nonetheless. At least at camp, there’s water and food and a change of clothes and _family._

Here, there isn’t much of anything, and he swears he can feel himself drifting away day by day. He knows he’s going crazy without someone to talk to, and he’s starting to hear voices in his head, soft and kind and sounding distinctly like a friend he used to have once upon a time at camp. 

D a v i d .

I m i s s y o u . 

C a n y o u h e a r m e ? 

I ’ m s o r r y . 

I ’ m s o

s  
o  
r  
r  
y

He jumps out of his seat, breathing hard, landing too heavily on his leg and sending a bolt of pain through his entire body like a strike of lightning. It all feels too real, too hauntingly disturbingly real, and he brushes his cheeks to wipe away tears that he barely realised he’d been crying. 

“Who’s there?” He says, raises his stick, and his voice breaks around the words. “Would you- show yourself?” The wolf is still fast asleep, he remembers with a pang of annoyance, and suddenly feels scarily vulnerable without its protection. 

He’d rather have claws and teeth protecting him than a broken leg and a wooden stick. 

I f o r g i v e y o u . 

D o y o u f o r g i v e m e ? 

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He still isn’t entirely convinced that this is real, that he’s not just hearing things, that this stranger with the sad voice that sounds like a child isn’t all in his head. He’s been out here by himself long enough for him to go crazy, he figures. It was bound to happen sooner or later. 

“Are you real?” He calls, and swings the stick aimlessly when he hears an all too familiar laugh that sounds like it’s coming from somewhere behind him. “I- wait, Jasper?”

It can’t be. 

It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be.

But it is, it is, it is.

Y o u c a n h e a r m e !

Y o u r e m e m b e r m e , D a v i d ! 

“I- how- you-” David stutters over his words, letting his stick drop to the ground with a small thump, and breaks down crying. It hurts, throwing himself onto the ground with no concern whatsoever for how he’s going to land, but he bites through the shooting pain in his leg and focuses on the pain in his heart. “You aren’t _real._”

There’s a stunned silence, and as David chokes through his tears, he thinks that maybe he really is imagining things, that he’s talking to himself, alone in a forest, with no one to hear him or find him or care. 

T h a t ’ s k i n d a r u d e , D a v e y . 

He snorts. The voice in his head thinks he’s rude. And it’s probably right. 

“Go away,” he says, snottier and more blunt than he intends it to be, but he means it all the same. “You aren’t _real,_ I’m just going crazy.”

Y o u w e r e l o w k e y a l w a y s c r a z y , d u d e . 

“Oh, heck off.” He feels his mouth twist into a slight smile before he catches himself, digging his nails into his legs and pulling his knees close to his chest. 

R e m e m b e r m e , D a v i d . 

I ’ m r e a l . 

P l e a s e .

It hits him like a truck. There’s memories and memories and memories, of things he had almost long forgotten, and he takes in a shuddering breath as it all comes rushing back.

Hidden candy in their tent. 

Secrets whispered to trusted ears. 

Hysterical laughter shared in the dead of night. 

Shaking hands reaching out for comfort. 

Nervous lips pressed together awkwardly. 

And Jasper, pulling away from him with a soft smile gracing his lips, squeezing his hand tight, telling David that he likes him, he likes him _so_ much, so much more than he ever intended to, before they lean in and kiss again. 

David can feel himself shaking as he remembers it all, and presses a hand to his chest to still himself. 

Bad idea. 

He shrieks in pain as his hand touches the unhealed slash marks in his skin, and leans back fast, too fast, falling and landing on his back in the dirt, smacking his head against the ground. He yells in pain again, his stomach clenching as he tries to ignore it, and he scrabbles into an uncomfortable sitting position in the dirt. “_Ouch._”

S o r r y . A r e y o u o k a y ? 

“How’s this even possible?” David says, and closes his eyes in despair. He covers his face with his hands too, an extra layer of defence against the reality of the situation, and scrunches up his nose in confusion. “You parents picked you up, you’re in the city somewhere. Why are _you_ my imaginary friend?”

I ’ m n o t i m a g i n a r y ! 

There’s a slight snap to Jasper’s voice now, and David winces as it glitches a little, like Jasper is a computer that’s stuck and starting to freeze. His stomach drops and Jasper’s next words through, and he scrambles to sit up as quickly as he can. 

I ’ m d e a d . 

David stares. There’s nothing there to stare at, he still can’t _see_ Jasper, but he stares anyway. At the sky, the ground, the trees, at his own hands, until he lets out a scream of anguish and throws himself back down against the ground as hard as he can. His body shakes violently and he lets out a series of strangled noises that aren’t quite strong enough to be sobs. 

D a v e y , p l e a s e d o n ’ t c r y . I t ’ s o k a y . 

The voice is soft, and David can almost feel Jasper’s hands touching his shoulders as a comforting presence, but his words are lies and David chokes on air as he punches the ground with all of the energy that he has left. “It’s _not_ okay! None of- none of this is okay! None of it! I’m lost, you’re gone, nothing is okay, _nothing is okay!_”

A rock underneath his feet splits in two. He hadn’t even realised he’d been standing, but his footprints are deep in the mud and the whole halves of the rock crumble, and his foot pulses with the pain from kicking them. 

O h , h o o e y . D i d t h a t h u r t ? 

“No,” David says petulantly, crossing his arms tight over his chest. 

H m . G o o d . 

“Please just go away,” David whispers, and he can already feel the regret with every word he says. “I don’t want to remember you.”

There’s a silence. 

David lets his body relax, breathing out a sigh, but the relief is almost immediately replaced with a sickening guilt as Jasper speaks again. 

O h .

Just one word. It’s just a single word, David tells himself. It’s literally just one word, it doesn’t _mean_ anything. 

Except Jasper sounded so fucking _hurt._

I ’ m s o r r y .

David winces at the heartbreak that seems to be laced into his voice. Heartbreak caused by him. 

I ’ l l g o . 

“Jasper, wait-” he starts, and he already knows it’s useless. He doesn’t know how, but he can feel that Jasper’s gone again. And somehow, David gets the feeling that this time, he isn’t coming back. 

He’s lost Jasper again. 

And this time, it’s his fault. 

Maybe it was his fault the first time too. 

He doesn’t know. 

He’d love to say that he doesn’t care either, that it’s been over a decade and he’s _over_ it, that it doesn’t bother him, but it does it does it does, so fucking much. 

“I’m sorry!” He says, and he’s crying again almost immediately, wrapping his arms around himself and hugging himself tight as the reality of what he just said sinks in. It was stupid, and he doesn’t know why he said it, because he does want to remember. 

He wants to remember everything. 

He doesn’t want to forget the colour of Jasper’s eyes, or the way his hair used to fall, or the light of his shoes, or the taste of his lips ever again. 

He wants the memories to stay. 

He wants it to stay. 

He wants Jasper to stay, he wants him to stay forever, and now he’s gone ruined it because he was _scared._ And that’s such a stupid reason. 

He was scared to have Jasper back. 

He was scared to hear his voice after living so long without it. 

He was scared to fall in love all over again.

To have it ripped from his hands all over again.

To have his heart break all over again. 

So he broke it by himself.

Which is ironic, he supposes. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and sinks to the floor. He barely looks up as the wolf makes its way over to him, rubs against his hand, settles down on the ground next to him with a soft moan of exhaustion, and he buries his face into its fur with a broken sigh, letting the warmth stifle his tears. “Goodnight, Jasper,” he murmurs, and he’s asleep by the time the last word leaves his lips. 

He arrives back at Camp Campbell the next day, holding close to the yellow shirt around his neck. 

He never hears Jasper’s voice again.

**Author's Note:**

> back at it again with my angst bullshit 
> 
> y’all know the drill: i haven’t proofread bc it’s time for me to get my nightly 3 hours of sleep and i’m @mermistia on tumblr 
> 
> ANYWAY goodnight and good jaspvid to y’all


End file.
